Star Anise Bowl V1

The mold for this bowl was an open-faced, lost wax plaster silica hand-built mold. I made silica molds of real star anise, and took wax impressions from those molds and attached them to a blank wax bowl. The wax was approximately 2.5″ X 5″. After the mold was built and steamed, there were quite a few really bad undercuts, where the plaster had filled in between the anise and the bowl, so I cleaned those up as best I could. The mold was approximately 2″ thick throughout. The mold was built on September 28th, and Steamed on October 3rd, 2008.

I will re-make this bowl, as during the firing, the pate-de-verre slumped and pulled away from the edges of the mold, making the upper edge of the bowl rough and fragile. Also, a lot of plaster was fused into the glass, and is impossible to remove.